Joseph Conrad

"I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly."

"I take it that what all men are really after is some form of perhaps only some formula of peace."

"Facing it-always facing it-that's the way to get through. Face it!"

"I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never know the real, real truth...."

"There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget."

"It was a dark story."

"Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness."